Skin Research in India

Skin research is emerging both in India and Switzerland as a topic of importance. swissnex India, with its mission to connect the dots between Switzerland and India in research, has brought out this report to provide insights to Swiss researchers on the current state of skin research in India. In this report, we’ve tried to identify key people, showcase impactful recent publications, list active associations, give a sample list of important conferences and, most importantly, highlight Indo-Swiss collaboration opportunities with funding options to sustain these collaborative efforts.

High prevalence of skin diseases, easy access to large samples and translational nature of research have led to skin research gaining prominence in India. Scimago Journal & Country Rank, places India at 8th spot in dermatology research in the world in 2016 in terms of number of papers published. Of late, there have been exceptional research outputs from Indian labs in skin research published in top dermatology journals.

Switzerland has been promoting skin research quite seriously, and in October 2016, universities and hospitals in Zurich, Switzerland, launched a large-scale skin research project named Skintegrity that aims to position Zurich as the leading global skin research centre.

The highlight of this report is the identification of the top 5 areas of research focus in skin research in India and presentation of two recent publications from each of the focus areas. These have been identified based on relevance of research in the Indian context, secondary research of publications in top journals since 2015 and through direct interactions with researchers representing the diverse nature of skin research in India. swissnex India is grateful to Indian researchers for their valuable time in shaping this report.

We find a good overlap between Skintegrity and India’s research ambit including research on skin diseases and tissue repair disorders. We hope that this report serves to facilitate new collaborations between Switzerland and India.